You can take the time for listening now. You already
had meditation in action, but you must keep it clear, that what I am now going
to say is meditation in words.

After almost a week of practice you probably
experience the hindrances progressing in your meditation. That is very natural.

Desire is one of the hindrances or defilement of the
senses. You want to have a good sense-impression and because of that desire,
you get into problems. You experienced that for yourself already. Because
you're wanting or expecting a result in your
meditation, you compare, you judge. You're comparing with the practice or
experience in former meditation practice, and now this is causing problems.
Caused by desire or wanting.

Sometimes you want certain things to be away, like
pain or mental images. The images from inside, like pictures, light or certain
ideas that you have had in your life can hinder you. But also many times, when
you practiced good enough, you get the results of the vipassanā process, what we call vipassanā-ñāna.
You can see things you have done before in your life that you forgot, what is
now coming back strongly.

This is a result. I already said to some meditators:
If you see that you begin to recognize your karma and if you take it as seeing
your previous karma, or previous action, nothing more, then it's only cause and
effect! Cause and effect of nāma-rūpa. If you
do more, analyzing yourself with it, or manipulating yourself with it, then you
get into the hindrances.

Because of your practice in this retreat, you see
certain ideas of yourself, certain patterns of your life before coming back to
you very clearly, very strong. Two things can happen. If you are not clear, it
causes you hindrances. If you are clear, it is called vipassanā.

If you see things in the past, it makes that you are
longing. If you do not note, it can be considered as a defilement of vipassanā. At that point you have to be
quick, to note them as 'seeing', as 'remembering' or whatever. The hindrances
will be removed then and have no power anymore.

There is the desire to be with and the desire to be
without.

When you're irritated, you want to be without. When
you have this ill-will, it's again a hindrance. Your meditation will stop
progressing this way. It's also coming as anger sometimes, or disliking.

To make it clear: If you dislike something what is
coming in your experience, in the practice of vipassanā meditation, it's a hindrance. To prevent that hindrance,
you should note. If you note something you dislike, the hindrance is removed.

As human beings we immediately get a reaction at a
contact of the senses. If you hear, if you see, even if something goes on in
your mind, if you smell, if you taste, if you touch something physically, the
reaction is liking or disliking. This means that you are
going on with conditioning yourself, and you are not free.

In the last talk, I mentioned that you are carrying
your self, that you are loading yourself, if you do not practice vipassanā meditation, because you are
carrying the five aggregates with you. Now I want to make it more
simple. Try to avoid two things in your practice, every moment, here and
now:

When there is liking: you have to be on time. When
there is disliking: you have to be on time.

On time with recognizing and noting. If you note something you like, then you do not hang
your self with it. If you note something you dislike, you have no irritation on
it. So you get rid of that. Then you will have no liking or disliking, and you
are calm, you are peaceful. You are in connection with the pure consciousness
then, what we call the supramundane consciousness.

If it happens that you hang on to something, or get
irritated or feel aversion, it will disturb your purity, disturb your peace. So
you have to make it clear. Every time when you make the-desire-to-be-with
clear, or the-desire-to-get-rid-of clear, you are in the process of vipassanā.

I said sometimes before, that you have to be mindful
all the time and on time. You are able to avoid liking or disliking because you
note. There's no other way. Noting is very important. If you do not note or
name, you immediately like or dislike the contact of the senses.

Noting is not like saying mantras. We note to
recognize the object, like pain, like sound or like scent. Sometimes you like
it if it agrees with you, or if it disagrees with you, you dislike it. You have
to avoid these two things in this retreat.

Something you like: You do not have to be with it.
Something you dislike: You do not have to get rid of it or go away from it.

You have to be there without conditioning. When you
are with something without conditioning, then you are stable. The enlightened
ones are not movable like us. We move too much up and down. Therefore we are
not free. And we are restless because of that too.

In this practice you begin to see the character of
your self. At the beginning of your retreat, you are quite okay. You can sit,
you can walk, but after a certain period of time retreating you get restless.
We are restless because we move too much.

In daily life we have no time to see that we are
moving so much. Here you sit still in your room, you have no contact, you don't
talk, you don't see certain things, but there's still restlessness in yourself
during these days. In fact it is good for you to see this. Restlessness is also
a hindrance.

After having been here for many days, you have the
feeling of no energy, you have the tendency to sleep. Drowsy
and at the same time restless. And sometimes you are exhausted. You have
not enough energy.

When you work in the morning your practice is quite
okay. You have a good naming and noting of your stomach, rising and falling.
But then in the afternoon or late in the evening you do not know, you feel
restless. Why is it different? Because you are seeing the
same things too much and you get bored sometimes. That is in fact the
beginning of your wisdom. It means you are going to remove something from under
the surface. You remove your defilement or the hindrances.

At the beginning perhaps you feel more rest because
you substitute your self with the practice of concentration. But now after more
practice, restlessness has become powerful. Drowsiness, sleepiness is there
too, and you begin to have doubt. Doubting itself is also a hindrance. So
negativity prevails. Negativity of your personality appears or reappears more
and stronger.

Mindfulness, confidence, energy and understanding of
your situation, only these things will help your practice moving forward. We
call them spiritual faculties or indriya
in Pali. The power to deal with the hindrances, to be
confident in what you are doing here, to have enough energy, to have good
balanced mindfulness. Not the mindfulness that you want to make, but the
mindfulness that makes you make a note.

Certain meditators try to note and name too much.
That's also disturbing. It's disturbing yourself, disturbing your energy,
disturbing your concentration. How to note or to name without disturbing?

Just be very clear, clear in the moment of the contact
of the senses. Because you see a lot of things going on, it makes you confused
and not clear. You do not know what to note or to
name. It can happen here in the retreat. So what you have to do is to make a
note onthe
confusion. If you know that you are confused and make a note on that, it's
clear enough for vipassanā.

You are so concerned, you engage yourself too much
with what you're doing with the technique, and because of that you become
unclear, and mindfulness is not there.

Vipassanā meditation is not there anymore, but if you become
clear for a short moment only, it is a moment of enlightenment already, and if
you're clear, what more is there? There are no questions anymore.

With your intellect you try to get the answer. That's
the worst part, the critical moment of your practice. You are working hard to
be able to be in contact with wisdom, and your intellect comes to judge and to
compare. Perhaps you understand a lot, but it is not wisdom, it's merely
perception or only thought.

When you know something from your memory, it doesn't
matter what you remember, it's merely perception, it's not real understanding.
Everything you know, or what you've learned about all kinds of subjects is
merely perception. It's not wisdom.

Not the wisdom in the meaning of discipline,
concentration and wisdom that we are practicing here. It's not that kind of
wisdom. Everything that you compare and judge, and all you understand from that
judgment is merely your thought, is merely intellectual. You have to go beyond
intellectual knowledge: getting wisdom by being clear. The clarity that you
have in every moment is wisdom, is almost vipassanā
itself.

You should try to avoid getting too much intellectual
knowledge. When you think something is right, in fact it's wrong. If you think
that something is right, it is wrong for vipassanā.
It's very tricky, but in fact nothing is right.

Seeing, noting, being aware
of what's here. Every lightness of the contact of the
senses is the only answer. Not something when you say: Oh, this is right. In
fact that is very wrong for wisdom. So take care for that. This is going to
happen.

My talk is part of that too. What I am saying to you
these days is not your wisdom. We borrow it. It's not yours,
it's not your property. I borrow it from the texts or from my experiences to
say it to you, and you borrow it from me to carry it on again. That is not the
real wisdom, not the real understanding.

Real understanding you get from your awareness of the
senses, not by carrying what you've learned or heard in the discourse.

Many of you, when I ask you: 'Do you note?', reply: 'No, I do not note, I am aware'. Then I say: 'No,
you carry'. If you are aware that means that you carry. If you are aware of
something what is going on in your meditation, you automatically carry. You are
not free, you belong to what you are aware of.

Pay attention. If you are aware of certain things and
say: 'I have a very sharp awareness', that is also
strong carrying. You are not free. What you're aware of is your self. It's your
personality, your personal entity. A heavy load and at the same time no wisdom.

Why is there no wisdom, even when I'm very clear and
aware?

There is no wisdom, because it makes you belong to
what you see, to what you recognize now. If you recognize something and you
leave it there, then it's wisdom. Wisdom comes together with freedom. And lightness and happiness of course. More than happiness
even.

Happiness as a result of comparing or judging our life
is different from the happiness that we become aware of in the supramundane
consciousness.

The supramundane conscious is not the conscious that
makes you understand things in your daily life, but the one beyond that, above
that, what we call lokuttara.

Lokuttara means above. Above your
consciousness. If you belong to your consciousness you're not free,
because it makes you carry. If you go above your consciousness, then it is nibbāna, enlightenment or supramundane.

Sometimes meditators get problems with their
perception. You have to do things connecting to this and that. When you
practice intensive enough you are going to get confused on this. Sometimes you
think you're going mad, or you do not feel okay: 'I am so confused. I'm not
able to get connected where I used to be connected with.'

If this happens, you should welcome it. Let's say: you
have to make yourself insane to become sane, become mad first and then get
well.

We are carrying a lot of things with us, and we have a
lot to do with that. And suddenly, on a certain moment, you have nothing to do
anymore. And ooh, you feel so lonely, you feel so bad. But if you carry on your
mindfulness on that, then you can overcome, come above that.

That's a point of enlightenment. We call that magga-citta, pure consciousness. A consciousness without connecting. When you disconnect, you
become a supreme being at the same time. Some call it a big mind. In the
teachings of Zen they call it a big mind. That means: you have a better mind, a
better consciousness without narrow connections, but with an opening to all. Opening to everything that may come, without restriction, without
limit.Limitless and great being.Enlightenment.

Christians, Muslims and Hindus believe that their God
is the greatest Being. In Buddhism we see nibbāna
with our enlightened consciousness as the greatest being.

In their terms they call it 'united with the
God-kingdom', but in our practice we unite with pure consciousness in nibbāna. It's great, I already explained
to you, it's unlimited and it's fair at the same time.

We are not fair when we are still subject to liking.

If there's something you like, that's good. If there's
something you do not like, it's bad. You're not free, you belong to what you
like and you have to run away from something that you do not like.

It's too bad, to run away from something. If you run
away from something, how miserable you are! Miserable until we try not to go
into something and try not to run away from something. How to do that? I say
try noting and naming, it's the only way. You should not run away for
something, and not get into something. That makes you free.

We all carry the five groups of our personality: body,
feeling, perception, conditioning and mundane consciousness. If you want to leave
them, you have to get into pure consciousness, and at the same time you have to
purify or clear your hindrances.

Sleepiness and drowsiness. They are the hindrances giving most problems. They
are rooted very deep in the human being. You do not get rid of it, unless you
become an arahat.

I said some time ago, if you practice vipassanā meditation, you obtained the
second vipassanā-ñāna. The first ñāna means that you can classify or
recognize the object in your consciousness (nāma-rūpa). In the second ñāna you begin to recognize cause and
effect. In this you are already enlightened.

If you see cause and effect in the vipassanā practice, you are a sotapanna or a small streamwinner. You
overcome the stream. A little one. You begin to see
that enlightenment is there with you, and that enlightenment is possible.

But then you will ask the question: Why am I so
drowsy?

Because you are not yet an arahat. Only perfect enlightenment can remove the drowsiness,
but when you see cause and effect, it already makes you better off, because you
begin to understand karma.

Perhaps you understood the story of karma, but this is understanding with your heart. By seeing with your heart,
you feel something coming back to you. Like something that you have done in
your life before which now is coming back to you very strongly.

This signifies the second ñāna of vipassanā
meditation: Cause and effect! Cause and effect of what?Of nāma-rūpa.
What you see is nothing more than nāma-rūpa.
Nothing more than cause and effect.

What is rūpa?
A certain matter or certain objects. It makes you aware of certain things.
Awareness of the object is nāma. The object itself is rūpa.

In Buddhist theory, when we say rūpa, like in the five aggregates, we refer to the body only. We
mean matter or thing. That is only in the theory of the five aggregates. But in
the vipassanā practice it is not only
referring to the body. It is referring to everything that makes you aware. That
can be the body and that can be the mind. When you are aware of that, the
what-you-are-aware-of is the rūpa and
the awareness of it is the nāma.

When you are aware of a certain thing you like, it
makes you happy, it makes you enjoy. If you are aware of a certain thing you
dislike, it makes you angry or irritated. So we are conditioned by our karma.
That's the so-called samsāra. It's a
samsaric process.

People in normal life see: 'I am' or 'I am happy', 'I
feel so bad', 'I feel sorry or depressed', or whatever. When you do vipassanā you do not see it that way.

What you see or what you know, is nothing more than cause that is effecting you now, and it effects you as
liking or disliking.

You should only be with it, without running away or
running into it. Running away or running into, makes you tired,
makes you bored sometimes. If that happens, we call that the beginning of
enlightenment. So do not underestimate your boring or your tiredness. It's
good, but it is not good for your ego. It's very bad for your ego, but it is
good for enlightenment.

You have to turn it that way in the retreat. If you
feel dissatisfied with yourself, you can say: 'Oh, I'm glad for this'. 'This is
what I'm being with now'. 'Where I'm working with now is: not being happy with
my self'. There you get the trick.

If you have not been with your self at the good moment
and if you are so happy with your self, the ego is strong. That's defilement
and bad for vipassanā meditation.

Don't make time to make your self happy. If you do
that, you become easy in your retreat and you will have a hard time here. You
already had a hard time here, because you wanted to make your self happy by
practicing meditation. That is impurity already, because it's desire for self.

If you trust that you can sit and you can walk
orderly, it means that you are in control of your self. You carry your self
then. You may never trust that. It can turn to be good. It can turn to be bad.
It's never the same. If it is always the same, you do not see impermanence, you
do not see change.

So you will recognize all this going on. Nothing is
real, nothing really that you can do, but we should do it. If you see that you
can do something, it's already a wrong idea, a wrong attitude, a wrong vipassanā retreating. We should do it
just to be. Nothing more than to be.

You're having no rest after all this hardship, let's
say you're having no peace, but you do it. That's good enough. If you do only
what you like, that's very bad. Be careful. You must also be able doing
something that you dislike.

Sometimes you like something, but that doesn't matter,
you just do it. You don't take something you like as so important. You take
something, and you note and you name. You act in your meditation. To be in
action, that's more important. In this term you are progressing in the vipassanā meditation practice.

This is just a word of warning or inspiration for your
meditation practice. Don't give up and don't give in to your ego. Ego is always
demanding. Don't believe in it. Demanding never ends, it's never enough. It's
very greedy. Always one more.And
more. And where it is enough it does not understand. That is the ego, that is self.

I appreciate you. I'm admiring you after talking with
you today. You have a hard time here, and I am glad that you are having a hard
time. Sorry to say that.